Friday, 3 February 2012

Taking it all for a spin

Aaargghh! Hobby time has slowed down yet again the last few weeks with working abroad and the fact that it's -3c in my garage! I've spend the time in the warmth basing up the rest of my mini's and spraying a few bits up.

I did manage to get a couple more mini mechs painted up, pics coming soon and I got in a quick skirmish game using the completed terrain and the USE Me rules, the lighting in the room was not that great so the pics were a little off.

The basic premise was an asteroid had landed in the middle of a nearby industrial base so troops were called out to investigate whereupon they meet a group of the local natives attracted by the impact.....

The alien side had a squad of 5 drones with a heavy weapon and another squad of 8 warriors with side weapons and grenades.

Points wise the alien troops came out over 20 points more, which starts to show a small flaw in the points system as we will see.

During the first turn the strider took a pot shot at the distant drones that went wide of the mark while the rest of the alien warriors moved up.

By the end of turn 2 both sides had moved into combat positions but the squad of drones got caught out in the open and pounded by the striders cannons leaving only the drone leader with his heavy weapon to hold the flank.....

Over the next couple of turns the lone drone stared down the strider but had little chance to damage it even after scoring a number of hits, the strider eventually wiping the drone off the map with a double cannon hit.

On the other flank the alien warriors ran out from behind cover to attack the spider bot at close range and promptly missed every single shot.....in return the spider bot opened up it's automatic weapons and ripped the warrior squad in half.

In the next turn the warriors plowed into the troop squad (who had yet to land a hit as well) and struck down two, hitting back the troop squad struck down the rest of the warriors, only the warrior leader was left standing....

After a couple of turns of combat in which the alien leader managed to wing/strike down/kill most of the troop squad (I took a little license here with the rules to allow the leader to take each of the troops on, it made a more cinematic end to the game!) but was eventually cut down.

Overall it was an ok game, the points system did not really add up with the vehicles coming in really low value compared to the troops (with EV4). Combat wise there's only a very low probability of any troop weapons damaging a vehicle so I might change the rules slightly for heavy weapons to even it out a little. I did like it though, it was quick and the rules were easy to remember after a couple of turns but the best thing is the feeling of playing on a finished borad/terrain and mini's :). I think next time i'm going to take the FUBAR rules for a spin. Now with the weather so cold i'm going to have to bring my mini's inside to paint, got a pile of 15mm.co.uk's Cultists here I can't wait to get stuck in to!